MUMBAI – Squash? Really? That’s part of a purportedly cool plan to draw in tweens, teens and 20-somethings? Weed is legal in California, no problem out of competition, thank you doping control, but that is the idea? Seriously? Squash?
I teach college students at the University of Southern California, a key piece of the International Olympic Committee’s target audience. When the discussion came up this week in class about the five new sports the Los Angeles 2028 said it was proposing, squash, yay, and four others, a package the IOC executive board ratified here Friday for confirmation by its assembly in a few days, one of my students who consistently sees right through institutional BS called it the way it is:
“What,” he said, “is squash?”
Indeed, there seems such a disconnect between each and all of the five and everything the Olympic world has been saying it is about.
Squash. Baseball/softball. Lacrosse. Flag football. Cricket.
Taylor Swift on Wednesday at The Grove in Los Angeles at her movie premier with her — and the Olympics’ — target demographic // Getty Images
For years, the IOC has been talking a big game about “urban” sports, about taking sport out of stadiums and arenas, to the streets and to the people. That’s what the breakdancing thing – “breaking,” in Olympic jargon – is all about, along with skateboarding, surfing and sport climbing, and it just shows you how breaking is being seen, totally a Paris 2024 one-off, which everyone knew it would be.
None of these five, meantime, remotely do any of that Doobie Brothers takin’-it-to-the-streets stuff.
Moreover, adding five team sports, each with six teams, seems sure to blow out the 10,500-athlete cap the IOC has said it is religious about staying at or under.
Beyond, the IOC and the Olympics need to be relevant with the only audience that counts – teens and 20-somethings. Which is why the Doobies, literal, metaphorical, figurative, and the street stuff (all puns intended) — not the point. Taylor Swift is.
How many 15-year-old girls are on TikTok going, hey, Muffet, let’s play a smashing round of squash before going to the Taylor Swift Eras movie? Or, even more ridiculous, let’s camp out here on my couch and watch this riveting squash livestream on my new iPhone15 before seeing TayTay?
If the answer – anywhere in the world – is more than three, it’d be a stunner.
Laugh if you want but what the Olympics needs, what LA28 in particular needs, is what Taylor Swift has shown the world is entirely possible – crazy engagement. Her movie opened Wednesday at The Grove, an upscale LA mall. More than 2,000 fans showed up. Everything else at the mall was shut down. Everything. Taylor herself showed up and took selfies with fans. Commence swooning.
When Taylor goes to NFL games, ratings spike. Her live shows are events for trading bracelets, dancing and singing and more. They are – an occasion. A memory-making event.
That’s what an Olympics needs to be.
Instead: Olympic television ratings are on the decline if not outright tanking, digital engagement is all fine and dandy but no one has yet figured out how to make big money at it and, last but surely not least, the IOC’s corporate sponsor program is in need of a huge re-do.
The IOC and its organizing committees essentially need to pick and then promote two things: where the Games are held, and what sports are on the program.
Los Angeles has twice before proven and surely will again in 2028 be an awesome locale. Nothing needs to be built. All good there.
But this five-part package?
Baseball does not belong in the Olympics. The best players do not play. The Olympics are about bringing the best in the world together. Full stop. As for softball — it does not get in without baseball. Fair? No. True? Yes.
Squash? From the U.S. Squash website: “Squash players are business owners and senior executives in upper management throughout corporate America along with research physicians, architects, attorneys and accountants. Squash players are highly educated. 98% of squash players are college graduates with 57% having graduate degrees. Eighty-five college sent teams to the nationals in 2013, including all the Ivys, Stanford, UVa and Vanderbilt.” If that doesn’t scream fun to 15-year-old Taylor Swift fans in their new Travis Kelce jerseys, or even “urban,” along with skateboard, dude, whut?
Lacrosse? This website has nothing but sincere and abiding respect for Jim Scherr, the former U.S. Olympic Committee chief executive, now head of World Lacrosse. Moreover, plug here for my alma mater, Northwestern, the now eight-time NCAA national champion Wildcat women’s team (2023 edition beat Boston College in the championship game, 18-6). For all that, the inclusion of lacrosse gives the IOC and LA28 an opportunity to virtue-signal, and so what, which the IOC did in its Friday press release, noting that the game was created by the “indigenous peoples of North America” and now provides a “unique opportunity to connect its North American heritage with its growing youth appeal.” Come on. The first lacrosse sixes world championship isn’t even due to be held until 2026. The IOC is finicky about its rules (see: 10,500 cap) until it, you know, isn’t.
Flag football? LA28 chair Casey Wasserman and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell have known each other for decades. Is being in the Games likely to promote the growth of flag football in the United States? Probably. Globally? When they start playing in Lesotho, Nepal and Armenia, that’ll be really something. Then again, the NFL has an awesome marketing arm and is all in. Once more: the NFL sure seems to have figured out how to reach the Swifties. The Olympics have not.
That leaves cricket.
There’s zero question that cricket – the Olympic version will be the T20 game – will draw fans here in South Asia and other cricket-crazy countries. It also, skeptics will note, will surely draw significantly more in Indian television rights fees.
Bach, at a news conference Friday, said the possibility of cricket came up at a dinner with Wasserman in the summer of 2022, amid the track and field championships in Eugene, Oregon. “There Casey saw already the great potential and was highlighting it himself,” Bach said.
Translation, and not that there’s anything wrong with it but at least let’s be honest: it’s about the money.
Money is good. LA28 needs to make money.
All the same, these 2028 Games, with 11 years to plan, marked an opportunity for some forward thinking.
Maybe they still can be. Hint: Taylor Swift knows all. Someone at the Grove obviously has her phone number. Please, LA28, call.